Your Location:

Stage one of Canada’s commercial seal hunt closes - more than 17,000 seals killed in just over two days

Wednesday, 25 March, 2009

Charlottetown, PEI, Canada

(Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada – 25 March, 2009) – The Canadian government closed stage one of its seal hunt today after sealers killed 17,200 seals in just over two days

Observers with the International
Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), who peacefully monitor the hunt each year,
obtained further footage today showing seals suffering during the largest marine
mammal slaughter in the world.

Sealers on Canada’s east coast hunted seals in the
Magdalen
Islands area after the
annual commercial seal hunt opened on Monday. Stage two of the hunt will open on
Friday on the nearby Maritime Islands. The Total Allowable Catch (TAC)
for this year’s hunt is 280,000 harp seals.

Cheryl Jacobson, hunt observer
with IFAW, said: “We witnessed today a classic example of the cruelty associated
with this hunt. An injured, bleeding seal escaped into the water before a sealer
could get to it. The sealer tried to pull the seal out by the hind flippers but
it slipped underwater anyway.

“This wounded seal will most
likely die underwater and unbelievably, that kill won’t even be counted in the
official catch number.”

Robbie Marsland, UK Director of IFAW, said: “Today’s footage
provides European policymakers with the cold hard facts about
Canada’s commercial seal hunt – it’s
unacceptably cruel. These seals, the overwhelming majority of which are pups
under three months of age, are killed primarily to provide fur for fashion items
which nobody needs.”

This year’s hunt takes place as
the EU stands poised to introduce a ban on the trade in products from commercial
seal hunts throughout its member states.

Recent economic evaluations have
indicated that the market for seal fur is saturated, causing prices to drop by
almost half. Processors report that sales of seal pelts all but stopped at the
end of 2007, and in early 2009, still do not appear to have recovered.